Players go below, other chars that deserve mention can be listed here, together (ie, 'Magento, Professor X, and Dr. N').

Scene Runner:

Stargirl

Social/Plot:

Plot

Players:

..........

The team was in their ship, returning from some space adventure and in high earth orbit taking about to begin thier descendent into the atmosphere to land when the ships proximity alarms started blaring and a firey object streaked past the ship, easily visable through front windscreen having only barely missed scraping it by mere inches. How it didn't hit the ship is a mystery. As the alarms scream thier protest the various readouts of the objection begin to flash across the screen, none of which tell good news. It's leaking gamma radiation and seems to be a weapon of unknown type and origin, on its current trajectory it will be landing in the countryside of Latveria.

Humming along with the cockpit stereo, eyes closed, Jubilee is decompressing. The music is new, the band is old: Running Wild. She's beginning to get used to space travel. Endless stars no longer hold the same enchantment, even if they're little less beautiful. In the right mood, anyway.

The quiet spell of contemplation is broken as that object streaks past, setting off alarms she's never heard before! "Jack?! Courtney?!" she yelps, looking around for them. "Whatever that is, it sounds bad…" She leans over the secondary console, frowning at the displays. She's also learning to read them.

What she finds confirms her original suspicions: It's bad. It's /very/ bad. "That thing's hotter than a hydrogen bomb in Death Valley! And it's heading right for Earth! But the computer can't identify it!"

For his part, Jack was watching sensors like normal, which means at about this point he was spacing off, ready to be back on Terra, relaxing, catching up with a few people, or on in particular. Then alarms and buzzers. "Yeah, not good, close call," that thing which Jubilee describes as hotter than a hydrogen bomb that nearly missed him. Even as its past them, he moves the ship a little, evasively too late, but also turns it around. "Great, no rest, we can try to stop it, but I don't want to shoot it down." Cause if it rains whatever is in it, could be just as bad. He looks towards Stargirl, "Can you stop something that fast," with her construct ability stuff.

When the alarms go off Courtney jumps a bit in surprise, the surfing magazine dropping from her hands, "Holy crap!" she exclaims as the object nearly takes out thier windscreen. "And it's dropping in the last place we would want it to. If it doesn't break up in the atmosphere or explode on impact that thing could easily be used as a WMD, by any despot looking to get a power upgrade." she has no trouble reading the consoles "I can't stop it but I can slow it down. Keep it from going boom, maybe." she is on her feet, her Staff appearing as her civvie clothes switches to that of her uniform. "You better beleive that this thing is already on the radar of any organization or country that has a satellite or is capable of hacking into satellites." she heads to the airlock and cycles herself out into space.

"Good luck, Courtney!" Jubilee calls after the blonde, sliding into the copilot's seat. The controls are still pretty unfamiliar, but maybe Jack can tell her what to do. She really wants to be more than a passenger on this ship!

She looks to Jack. "Do we have a… a tractor beam, or something like? Something we could grab onto it with? Give Stargirl a hand?"

"Yeah, whatever its doing, I think we need to help," so the start of some war is not witnessed globally as everyone picks up on it. Jack, considers slowling it down by Courtney, then looks to Jubilee. Tapping so he's using comsys and keeping Courtney in the conversation, "No, no tracter beam for us. I mean we should put one in, but, we got it second hand." The ship that is, funny story, involved bounty hunters taking them and them escaping by borrowing the ship, removing the bounty hunters from it. "How good are your piloting skills Jubilee, I mean, you get out there, and Courtney slows it down I can try to grab it." He's standing up, letting her take the control even. "We at least need to get something, figure out where it came from. If they really want to start a war, or blow up Latvira, they'll try again …"

As soon as Stargirl is free of the ship she begins to go into a dive through the Earth's atmosphere after the unidentified object (UI). Thank goodness for frictionless forcefields, or else that could be a hot descent. The UI has quite a head start on SG, and is going much faster, catching up will not be easy, she really has to push her limits, but thankfull gravity works and she gets within lasso range of the UI. The staff whips out, a rope of energy wrapping around it several times. Once secure, Stargirl starts to slow, pulling back on the energy rope, but that doesn't seem to be as effective as one would hope. There is no way she is going to be able to stop it from a hard impact in the the distance that she has to go.

Meanwhile on the consoles quite a few blips begin popping up as other groups, having detected the UI start to converge on the area. It seems like this may be a race to see who gets to it first and then who knows.

"Well, I /think/ I can follow it…" Jubilee replies, and quickly grabs the controls as Jack stands up without waiting for an answer! The ship's a bit more of a handful than she'd realized, and there are a rough few seconds while she gets it truly under control. Fortunately, they're over pretty quickly, and the ship's course smooths out. Glancing at the sensors occasionally, she follows the object down, gaining on it.

Then she sees the course data. "Um, Jack? Might wanna hang on… we're about to hit atmo, and the ride's gonna be a bit…"

There's a sudden shaking sensation, like heavy if nonviolent turbulence. "…bumpy-y-y-y-y!" the California girl finishes, gritting her teeth and struggling to hold the vessel on course.

Perfect she can follow, if Courtney gets some control on it, they can steady courses, align things.

Perfect she can follow, if Courtney gets some control on it, they can steady courses, align things. He can hold on when he gets outside, of course he's not ready for the bumps yet. Hands free, he is jostled around, hopefully not damaging the inside of the ship too much in the process. "Ugh, a little?" He'll have to use his hands to grab metal and pull himself where he needs to go. "I'll get to the airlock, wait for it to settle down a little, let me know when you're good and I'll go out of the ship." And he has a lot of stamina, no doubt, or durability, but a fall from this height will be a doozy even for him, he's hoping he can hold on to get close, becoming the ships tractor beam (or claw even).

Stargirl is pulling back hard on the UI, but the thing isn't slowing all that much, only by increments and even then the young woman is being dragged behind it as it continues its crash course into the backcountry of Latveria.

All the ships consoles are still scanning the thing, and don't come up with any new information, but its easy to see that the outer temp of the thing reads in the mid-kelvins, not sun hot but certainly hot enough to make slag of titanium. The blips of various organizations still flash on the screen, all of them steadily getting closer, some even close enough to be seen through the windscreen…it looks like a few of them even have an octopus decorating the side…or is that a skull with tentacles…hard to tell at this distance.

"Guys, we've got incoming ships… we could have a problem here. I don't know who uses that symbol, but it looks like bad news," Jubilee calls to Stargirl and Jack. "We'd better get this thing netted before they get into attack range!" Not least because Jubilee is no combat pilot! She hits the gas, closing in on the projectile.

Taking a mask on, Jack was in the airlock, and opened it up. Strong enough to hold onto a ship, it just came through the atmosphere itself. Not in the mid-kelvins range like the rocket, its 1500+ cause they just skipped off the atmosphere themselves. "Eh … warm …," he admits, starting to rethink this idea of being outside the ship at this elevation. "What, more ships, that's kind of weird." Then again, no telling how long its been in the air, but more ships coming to collect said rocket is crazy as it is. Considering the speeds they're travelling at, sort of limits who it coudl be. "Wait a second, its not skrull's is it, this isn't from space right?" Maybe they should of scanned it more, but now its about trying to catch it. Hopefully someone tells him how hot it is before he burns his hand on it, he's climbing onto the outside of the ship itself.

Moments ago Earth's defense grid, put up to detect incoming threats from deep space went crazy. Something was incoming, sensors couldn't say exactly what, just that it was leaking gamma radiation and was bad, very bad. And it was moving fast. It nearly clipped the Guardian's ship as it entered Earth's orbit and the three Guardian's on duty sprung to action. Stargirl has an energy rope around the Unidentified Object and is trying to unsucessully slow it down, instead is being dragged behind it. The Guardian's ship is going after it, Jubiliee in the pilot seat while Jack holds onto the outside of it.

Converging on the area as well are various other air craft. Several sport the Hydra logo, while others are obviously A.I.M. there are several that have no clear markings and further out, coming from the general area the Latveria captial lies in are a large group of Doombots. This is not going to be pretty.

That deep-space telemetry sensor system? That would be the one that the Justice League put in place when they were trying to deal with the threat of Mongo. It tracks all the way out past the system's eliptical boundaries, as well as above and below, and it has some of the best sensors Earth has ever imagined, let alone seen. But it can't be perfect; things happen. Nevertheless, the first to get that alert was the League, and they have not failed to respond.

A shattering series of sonic booms sound, as a glowing streak appears in the heavens, visible despite the local daylight as the heat corona of air friction continues to build. This object is much smaller - person-sized - and visibly maneuverable, as it changes course to adjust for an intercept vector ahead of the falling gamma-charged meteoric object.

"Guardians, this is Power Woman of the Justice League. I am inbound hot at your 5-o'clock mark 7. Preparing to engage hostiles in three … two … one …"

Brief flashes of crimson light streak out from the streaking Kryptonian in re-entry flames, slashing through the wings and engines of the Hydra and AIM aircraft at their closest approaches. For now, she leaves the DOOMbots alone; they are within their territorial airspace, and she has no right to engage them unless they confirm a clear and present danger.

"I assume you need some help slowing that thing down?"

Roughly at the same time from a slightly different vector, open comms frequency picks up thge strains of some old school Iron Maiden and the familiar voice of Tony Stark saying "Now, now, now..I think we've all learned that Gamma radiation makes for poor impulse control. Besides, Latveria is way too green as it is. Oh, and yeah - Iron Man, on station. Hope you paid your premiums."

What was an inbound streak a few seconds before is now a gleaming red and gold figure that immediately drops down to only a hundred feet or so off the deck and starts plowing the road of doombots with volleys of repulsor blasts and miniaturized jericho missile pods.

With her Staff gripped in both hands and the energy rope coming from it, Stargirl is fighting a looosing battle as she tries to fly in reverse to stop the UI from creating a large crater in the ground and possibly taking out the country of Latveria with it. "Damn straight I could use some help." she says through the comm, it sounds like she is gritting her teeth as she does so.

The Hydra ships begin to go into a tailspin, rapidly loosing altitude as the wings are taken out. Heavily armed Hydra agents leap from the lead planes, parachutes opening quickly. As they float to the ground they begin to fire energy weapons on both PW, the Guardian ship and Stargirl.

The Doombots do not take the arrival of Iron Man, lightly, they immediatly return fire, as others explode when hit by missles or repulsor blasts. Doombot parts rain down on the ground .

Jubilee, a little nervous now with all the ships coming out of the woodwork, sighs in relief as someone takes care of the nearest ones.. and the flying robot-things. Oh, wait, that's /two/ someones! "Totally cool to see you, Iron Man! And you, ma'am!" she transmits. "We don't have any way to catch this thing, and it'll be a /big/ hit in Latveria if it keeps falling! Help would definitely be appreciated, and not just by us… please? Pretty please? With frozen yogurt and strawberries?"

Jack Flag, on the oustside of the Guardians ship, chasing after the missle, sighs himself. No way grabbing the missile himself would of been a good idea. Now two more capable individuals present. "Whew, yeah," he starts climbing back to the open hatch/air lock. "If they could deal with the missile, Jubilee and I can keep the other ships off for a while." Then he looks around, "Jubilee, fly me over another ship, I need to borrow one." For the collection? Or to be effective at least.

SYS: Jubilee returns to the land of OOC. :(

"Help with the target it is. Iron Man, try not to get yourself shot out of the sky over Latveria, please. I doubt Doom would return you to us unscathed, and I don't like to think of him getting a look at your tech to add to his own." Power Woman responds, as she streaks down ahead of the gamma-charged Thing From Outer Space (TM), and then flies back up into it, arms outstretched as she ramps up her speed, pushing with all her Kryptonian might and momentum to aid in the airbraking. "Hang on, Stargirl. We'll get it." Somehow. Right? That /is/ what heroes do, after all.

The TFOS must have some internal propulsion system because the white hot object seems to push against Power Woman as she makes contact with the thing. And boy is it HOT, but with PW's Kryptonian(?) invulnerability she probably doesn't even notice. With Stargirl pulling and PW pushing it starts to slow down.

Stargirl is grateful for the help "I hope so." she says in reponse Power Woman as the superheroine puts herself between the Projectile and the fast approaching earth.

Having Iron Man on the sensors, Jack takes to flying the guardians ship opposite around the two women and the missle. While they work on that, anyone who gets too close gets blasted. Jack doesn't go to blow up ships, but he does mean to stop them, including making them fall from the sky. Its only reserved for ships daring enough to try and get at the missle while others actually work to stop it, and put it somewhere no crazies will touch it. "If you two slow it enough, I'll open up cargo space we can get it back to the States." Or the Watchtower even, if Power Woman or Iron Man think it a good idea.

"The gamma rads coming off of this? I'd rather put it up in orbit than land it anywhere on the planetary surface." Power Woman grits out, as she pushes harder and harder, ramping up her momentum to decrease the velocity, and change the flight path, directing the thing to a flatter trajectory to give them yet more time to slow it down.

It's almost as if the thing is either sentient or being controlled by an outside force, the way that it fights back against being manhandled by the uber powerful Power Woman and the not so power but still super Stargirl. The thing starts to make all sorts of beeping and vworping noises as it is pushed/pulled away from its target. What the pair is doing is working and shortly before PW's boots touch the ground they are able to gain the upper hand and with one woman pushing and the other pulling begin to drag it back into orbit.

Meanwhile the planes, under the firepower of the Guardian ship piloted by Jack start to drop like flies, with more soldiers or whaver ejecting from them. There are a few that have flying aces in the cockpits though, and those put up quite a fire fight, and go after the Guardian ship.

"In orbit it is," agrees Jack from inside the ship to Power Woman. Not much to argue himself, as long as no war starts over this missile launch at Latveria. "Let me know when you need me," or if that is, she might get control and fly the thing up to space herself. The average pilots parachuting down now, leaving some real dog fighters. Jack changes his plan, still wanting them up here in a fight, away from Stargirl, Power Woman and the missile, he instead checks his readings and flys for Iron Man. If the has a few aces on his tail, Jack will focus on those instead, hoping Iron Man picks up some of the crossfire to knock some off his own tail, a switch of targets so to speak.

Leaving a deep gouge in the rich, loamy earth of Latverian soil - and enraging Doom to no end, surely - Power Woman and Stargirl finally power the damned missile up and away, and into orbit. From there, it's easy enough to disable its engine and prevent it from flying away. Then it's time to examine it, determine where it came from, who launched it, and why. And then teach them a lesson. Oh. And gather up the radioactive core and seal it up for safety.

The forcefield that surronds Stargirl allows her surviability in space so once the alien missle is forced back into space she breathes a sigh of releif. She doesn't have the tech skills that PW does, but she will stand by to follow directions, that she can do pretty well.

As for where the thing comes from, it comes from a part of the galaxy that is little known or even heard of by either the Guardians or the Earth in general. But it was definatly designed to lay waste to a large section of Europe had it not been stopped.

With the WMD no longer a threat, all those various baddies start to disenage.

Other ships leaving finally, Jack turns Guardians ship towards Power Woman and Stargirl finally. When near enough, he calls out, "Well, that's a fine welcome back to earth. Should we get out of here before someeone asks what we're doing in their back yard?" Asked to both of them. There is a pause, and he calls more out, "Power Woman, I'm sure we're going your way if you'd like a ride." Not that she needs it, "We totally have an espresso machine in here." Just its not espresso, its some space sort of equivilant, probably involving fungus of some sort. Supplies nutrition of a complete meal if done just right even, yum, space food.